Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

What just happened? (IV)

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 12:29pm - 20 Comments

Eric Grenier points to the vote splits.

Of course, votes are not easily transferred from one party to the other. In many cases, the Liberals may have lost as many votes to the Tories as they did to the New Democrats. But many of the seat swings from the Liberals to the Conservatives featured large gains for the third-place NDP

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  • rick

    I dunno?, the other almost half of Canada is still "undecided".

  • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

    Which appears to be what turfed Wherry's favourite MP in London North Centre: Glen Pearson. It appears his constituents weren't quite as enamored with the Liberal's pontifications on democracy as our beloved Macleans blogger was. Shame.

    • Be_rad

      As the patron saint of conservatives everywhere, Don Cherry, would say, "Act like you've been there before."

      • Turd_Ferguson

        I thought that was from a Hip song.

    • Fred Boucher

      What happened in LNC had nothing to do with democracy. Conservatives at Ottawa phonebanks were calling into the riding on the weekend before the election telling outright lies to every voter: http://glenpearson.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/trans…

      • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

        Not a very graceful way of leaving his job, or of accepting the democratic will of his constituents. How very unfortunate.

  • Iccyh

    As Grenier points out, parties are not automatically interchangeable. Given that he can point at only 16 ridings across the whole country where vote splitting may have delivered the seat to the Conservatives (assuming transferable votes, which I'd question) while their margin for winning a majority is 12 seats, I'm not really sold on "vote splitting delivers Conservative majority" as a headline and as a message.

    Take Etobicoke-Lakeshore as an example:
    The 5000 NDP voters mentioned in the article may have decided they wanted nothing to do with Michael Ignatieff. If so, you can't simply assume that those NDP voters would have the LPC as their preferred alternative.

    Issues with the specifics of the vote splitting argument aside, I find the whole premise of discussions about vote splitting to be rather insulting to voters; implicit in any discussion about vote splitting is an assumption that voters somehow voted against their own interest and made a mistake. This strikes me as extremely presumptuous, and I find it very distasteful.

    • Yanni

      Well, sometimes they do. The commentator Lord Kitchener's Own talks about swimming in Orange Crush and waking up with a blue rash.

      That's why some people would prefer an option to choose their candidates in order of preference. Of course, in this situation that assumes that those who voted for the NDP would have chosen the Liberals as their second choice.

  • Turd_Ferguson

    It's everyone elses fault!

    We would have won if only all the other parties just went away!

  • OriginalEmily1

    Almost 40% of electorate didn't vote
    http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/decision-canada…

  • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

    So?

  • DPT

    You'll have to forgive Emily, she still in shock. she's been posting the same thing for 48 hours now.

  • OriginalEmily1

    It's not a comment, just a statement of fact.

  • OriginalEmily1

    Emily is quite happy at the way things turned out. LOL

    Don't presume to speak for other people.

  • Crit_Reasoning

    Seriously, Emily? You're happy with how things turned out?

  • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

    For what purpose?

    By the way, I'm not quite sure what the horror is in low voter turnout, as long as it's a choice of free will and not a gun to the head.

    For all this talk of low voter turnout, less forthcoming is an explanation. Who is it that's not voting? Young people who'd rather be sexting?

  • OriginalEmily1

    ??? Not everything is a fight Dennis….it was just an item on voter turnout.

    Non-voters are from all age groups, and walks of life.

  • OriginalEmily1

    Yes, indeedy.

  • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

    Who said it was a fight? There had to be some reason you posted the item. You don't want to say, fine.

  • OriginalEmily1

    LOL but I DID say, Dennis. You're simply trying to make it into a fight.

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